Thursday, January 12, 2012

Each night you dream a woman:
Hilda,
round breasted, bottle hollow,
who comes to collect all
the self betrayals
that fill your days,
coins you put through
the slot
in Hilda's high knot of hair,
the thirty pieces of silver you owe
to the Judas living inside you.

Each night she hovers
above
the bed
on hummingbird wings
coaxing
and bleating
her promises:
to do
your dirty laundry,
ja, and scrub
away the darkness,
if only you'll
give her something.

Hilda will fix, don't worry.
Just look at how strong her arms are.

Each night she flexes and bows
and you hate yourself
for having
so much to feed her:
so many lies,
so many timid silences.
You make your deposit
and soon
you've stopped
tossing and twisting the sheets.

Ja, Hilda fixes everything --
just close your eyes.
See?
She gives you
blindness,
she gives you
the sleep of mountains.

About My Writing

My aim in the poems is to catch the reader in an erotics of sound, story, and feeling; the web that stretches between the poles of lyric and narrative.
I look for surprises, wait for them to leap up out of the quotidian, like fish breaking the surface of the poem at its ruptures of juxtaposition and metaphor.
We read the world through the lens of the body, and I try to ride its hungers, triumphs, joys, follies, wounds, even its decay.
So the soul evolves in its salt brine of words.
Most of the poems contained in this blog came to me before the images, which were then selected to complement the writing.